Wow! It seems like I just finished my finals, but the break is already over and semester 2 starts in a few days.
Speaking of finals – holy cow! I won’t get grades back for another few weeks (the cynical side of me says they want us on the hook for the second semester’s tuition before they crush us with the reality of how we did), and I honestly have no idea how well (or poorly) I did. That seems to be the hardest part about law school. You don’t get any real feedback to gauge how well you understand what’s going on, and then you end the semester with one big test that counts for your whole grade. Heck, even if you have a good idea of how well you did on any particular exam, you still don’t know what your grade will be since it depends entirely on how well you did compared to your classmates.
But just for posterity, here are my predictions!
The memo was a disaster. I will be thrilled to get a B in Legal Writing. The curve at my school is a B, and with as lousy as I feel about my performance on the memo, I’ll take “average” with a smile.
Going in to Civil procedure, I was sure they were going to tell me not to bother coming back for the second semester. Although that is still a possibility, I came out of the exam feeling a lot better than I did going in. I honestly have no idea where I’ll end up.
Contracts. Going in to contracts, I felt like the master of the universe. I owned contracts. I WAS contracts! Then I read the essay and thought…. what’s a contract, again? I spun my wheels for a long time before I got back on track, and didn’t really have time to finish it. I feel like I did below average on the essay portion. However, I felt really good about the multiple choice portion. Again, it all depends on how everyone else did and I really don’t have a clue how well I did.
And finally… torts. Going in I felt even better about this one than contracts. If there was any class I was going to ace, this was it! My how things change when a 30 page exam book hits the desk and a clock starts ticking! I still feel like I did pretty well – I guess we’ll see.
I suppose the lesson is not to try to predict how you’ll do on law school exams, especially when you’ve never taken one before. Going into the tests, I was pretty sure I knew how I would do in each class. Coming out… no clue.
However, there are a few things I am sure about.
First, is that my professors are all freaks of nature. They are incredibly talented and smart. Half of them are genuinely funny, and the others… well, I guess you can’t have everything! I do feel lucky to have such incredible people teaching me about the law.
The second thing is that my classmates are pretty darned amazing as well. I knew I’d be surrounded by smart people in class, but I didn’t realize that I would be surrounded by such a range of talent. And contrary to the horror stories I’ve heard about law school, I actually like my classmates. Friendly, helpful, funny, motivated… just great people to be around. (I reserve the right to change my mind if I wind up at the absolute bottom of the curve!)
The final thing I learned in my first semester of law school is that it’s hard. No, really! I knew the courses would be difficult. I knew that it would take up a huge chunk of my time. I didn’t realize how absolutely exhausted I would be by the end of the semester or how much I would have given for just one more day to get ready for exams. I knew that working full time while attending school would be difficult – but until you step into the meatgrinder that is your first semester of law school, you really don’t understand how finely that grinder is going to shred you.
One semester down… 7 to go. Hoorah!
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